Messages from Monthly Keidanren, August 1998

Creation of the Recycling Society

Shoh Nasu
Vice Chairman, Keidanren
Chairman, Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc.

According to surveys undertaken separately and published in Japan and the United States a few months ago, more than 70 percent of Japanese people predict that the situation in their country will worsen, while approximately 70 percent of U.S. citizens are satisfied with the present situation and expect that their lives will further improve in the years ahead.

Comparing these surveys, I think it is important for us to sweep away the depressing outlook which results from daily news of the prolonged recession, mounting environmental problems and concerns about safety in everyday life or at work, believe in a new hope for the 21st century and endeavor to realize it. I am not arguing for optimism, but I believe that we should prepare a better design for the future and take steps towards it because we are businessmen, not critics.

In order to achieve this, the strong hope must be that Japan will have minimal government and that Japanese society should be unburdened from unnecessary regulation. At the same time, however, it must be borne in mind that both enterprises and citizens have to review how they should act. If business gave priority to earning profits at the expense of safety, they would lose their customers' confidence within the market-place. We will be relying too much on others if we expect that once the market is liberalized, everything will be carefully adjusted by some invisible hand. We should preferably move towards the establishment of a society where enterprises and individuals act according to their own responsibility, enabling society as a whole to adjust and organize itself automatically.

Concerning the problem of dioxin, for example, which is so much to the fore at the present time, it may be argued that local governments and private corporations are naturally responsible for the problem, since they have taken no effective measures to stop it. However, it must be pointed out that citizens, in their eagerness for greater convenience, have also been rather too indifferent to ever-increasing waste production. We cannot expect to find a drastic solution to this problem unless all parties involved, after searching their souls, take positive and specific actions.

An essential consideration in environmental protection is to realize a society which recycles resources and saves energy. Reportedly an increasing number of consumers have recently begun to consider the environmental implications of their purchases when out shopping. Using this situation as a new business opportunity, enterprises should develop their future business strategies based on the repair and reuse of products, not on mass production, mass consumption and mass disposal.

Apparently recycling is necessary not only for resource conservation and environmental protection but also for the purpose of revitalizing the economy and society as a whole. Competition, which demonstrates the survival of the fittest, helps to invigorate the economy and society but, in view of the need to foster new industries and new businesses, I believe that steps should also be taken to develop a social climate and mechanism that enable those who fail to recover from such failures.


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